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Thursday, 30 October 2014

TGO Challenge 2015: Cheese & Wine Party

2014’s CHEESE & WINE PARTY – CLICK TO ENLARGE

Sipping fine wines, scoffing tasty cheeses over 2,000 feet up in the freezing cold, in the middle of sod-all, with like minded souls in the finest hill country in Great Britain? Has this piqued your interest at all?

Lord Elpus and I have been hosting Cheese & Wine parties on the TGO Challenge for quite a few years. Each year we issued the invite on the TGO Message Board and if Challengers felt it was close to their proposed route they could pop along and join in. It was the luck of the draw if the party was to be on their route.

But in more recent years we have been publishing the party’s date and location a little earlier, so that Challengers could actually plan their routes to take in the parties. This still did not please some folk, as they had already planned their routes in advance of even hearing if they had a place on the Challenge!

So, with this in mind, this year Lord Elpus has issued 2015’s party invitation on the day all application forms were due in at Challenge Control. He posted the following message and invitation on the Challenge Message Board:

With all the entries safely gathered in, and the nights drawing in, Challengers old and new are thinking of the brighter days of May, and routes that they may wander across Scotland ... but, even as the Landranger maps are spread out they hesitate.Why? Because they do not yet know where and when the social highlight of the Challenge will take place.Hesitate no more. The invitations are printed, and here is yours, ready to prop on your mantelpiece.

It will be interesting to see who accepts our invitation this year. ALL Challengers are welcome. Here are some pictures of past parties so you can see what to expect.

2010 CHEESE & WINE PARTY – CLICK TO ENLARGE

2010: Held at the headwaters of the Waters of Eunich. We started at a tropical 2 deg C and then it rained and dropped below freezing with light snow flurries. You have to be hard to be a Cheese & Wine participant. The weather might not have been brilliant, but the C&Wers were wonderful. There was almost a couple of drownings.

2012 CHEESE & WINE PARTY – CLICK TO ENLARGE

The 2012 C&W party was held between Loch Treig and Loch Ossian. We were blessed this year by Val & Dave Machin ferrying in balloons and wonderful party food and wines! The weather was bright, sunny and freezing cold. The company was wonderful.

2013 CHEESE & WINE PARTY – CLICK TO ENLARGE

The 2013 C&W party was held at the very top of Glen Tromie. Again the weather was kind but again, it was bloody freezing! I wasn’t feeling too good (I had a kidney transplant a few weeks later) and baled out early. Again, Val and Dave magically produced wonderful party food & wines before walking off back homeward in the gloaming; They got home in the small hours.

2014 CHEESE & WINE PARTY – CLICK TO ENLARGE

The 2014 C&W party was held near the Chalybeate Spring in the midst of the proposed turbines for the massive Stronelairg wind farm in the Monadh Liath. We had a fantastic turn-out – fourteen or fifteen Challengers. Again, the weather was wonderful – sunny and warm (ish) to start with, turning to a wonderful moonlit night.

12 comments:

Sorry for the confusion there, Sir - We had the 2012 Cheese & Wine Party between Lochs Treig and Ossian. It was 2011 that went AWOL, as that was the year of the "Wake for the Wild" protest and that took up all my time to organise.

My route is not quite finished (although I have narrowed down the start point to two choices and I'm going to finish on the East coast - so nearly sorted) so I could build in a diversion to the C&W. The thing is, I went via the Water of Capilich a couple of years ago and a) I don't want to repeat places I've already been to, and b) I forgot to bury a bottle of port and a fine stilton. We'll see how my route comes together. (Sorry for publishing semi-anonymously. Wordpress keeps telling me I am not who I think I am.)

Whatever you clicked on seems to have done the trick, Judith. We can see who you are loud and clear.:-)There are oodles of wonderful routes to and from this wonderful section of the Water of Caiplich. We are spoilt for choice! Go on. You know you want to!

A bottle of port and a buried stilton sounds good to me. Just don't bury the cheese too far in advance...:-)

"Wicked wicked uncle Alan..."Ahem.Let's just take a close look at when the last two comments were published...Just two minutes apart...I'll let others decide who's the wicked, wicked Uncle, here, Captain!:-)

That looks like a lovely spot for a C&W party, and it's even on my route :-) Unfortunately that's my route for 2016!I would however be very interested to see some photos of the Water of Caiplich around the C&W party location as I'd like to get some idea of how crossable it might be (I'd ideally like to head from the Corbett to the north, Geal Charn, towards the Linn of Avon you see).Hope you have a great C&W party next May :-)

Hi.Because of spammers, I moderate all comments, so don't worry if your comment seems to have disappeared; It has been sent to me for approval. As soon as I see it, I'll deal with it straight away.Thank you!

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It's All About Me, me, me, me, me!

Sixty something beardy bloke who, thanks to my incredible brother David, now has three kidneys. I walked the length of Britain in 2007 and walk across Scotland every year on the TGO Challenge.
Anti Wind Farm.